Thousands of armed police have been mobilized in Anyang city of the central Henan province, as authorities tried to stop thousands of angry steelworkers from continuing their four-day protest against the private takeover of their enterprise.

An official with the local state-owned assets supervision and administration (SASAC) surnamed Dong is believed to remain under custody of the workers at the Linzhou Steel Corporation (LSC). Police have tried to break through lines of workers and their relatives patrolling the factory “several times”, but to no avail, eyewitnesses said.

The LSC, a 40-year-old state-owned enterprise with 5,122 employees, was sold to a private firm without the workers’ consent on July 24, the same day a similar protest erupted in a steel factory in Jilin province, where the general manager freshly appointed by the private company was beaten to death by steelworkers.

Various inside sources confirmed that the LSC was sold at a price nearly 64 million yuan ($9.4 million) lower than the initial bidding price at the auction. Massive layoffs soon followed for its workers, who each receive a mere 1,090 yuan ($159.5) for every year they have been with the factory.

Workers say attempts to privatize the factory, a political task of the local government under a state-level initiative to further open up the economy, have been going on for years.

Most resent the effort and see it as an endeavor to marginalize and “sell them out” to fill the pockets of the rich and the powerful. A most radical incident broke out in March, when more than 1,000 LSC workers blocked the streets and shut off the factory for days, resisting the sellout.

In July, the Puyang SASAC replied to the incident in an interview with the People’s Daily Online by saying that the workers’ claims for more compensation “have no legal basis”.

The workers, meanwhile, cite the state’s socialist legacies as the foundation of their struggle.

“I’ve been with the LSC for more than two decades, and all I got was 20,000 yuan and a letter asking me to leave. Is this a country still led by the Communist Party?” A LSC veteran with “aybls2008” as his pseudonym said in a post at the popular portal Tianya.cn.

“Somebody, say something for us the working men!” The post said.

The People’s Republic of China is a “socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class”, according to Constitution.

“How is a state-owned-turned-private company any good when the logistics chief is the corporate boss’s relative, the sales manager his friend, the accountant his lover and the storekeeper his aunt?” An Internet post written by a LSC worker asked. The post was soon deleted by website managers.

“Everything reactionary is the same; if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself,” another LSC worker cited the late leader Mao Zedong as saying in his blog.

Liu Junsheng, LSC’s board chairman, Party boss and general manager, reportedly told workers to “go home and ask your papas” for compensation. Liu was just named a national model in the steel industry in February.

On the day of LSC's sellout, Chen Guojun, general manager of the Tonghua Iron and Steel Co plant, shouted at workers who protested in front of him in a similar tone: “If you don’t kill me today and let me live, I promise you will not even get a bowl of vegetable soup to drink.”

Chen, 40, was beaten to death by workers the same day.